Re:PowerPC Solaris on the RS/6000
by neilv on Thursday May 28, 2020 @09:35PM
(#23345366)
Crazy; I didn't know the AIX kernel could be paged.
I'm wondering what kind of diskless workstations or thin clients IBM might've had in mind. Bottom-end engineering workstations would have at least a 100MB drive by the time the first RS/6000 models came out. But there were X terminals (usually diskless, sometimes with only 4MB RAM), and what I'll call "sub-workstations" that were compatible miniature engineering workstations (like the SPARCstation SLC at the time, which might've booted diskless, though hopefully you had 8MB RAM). Sun might've already been working on thin clients then (and had the slogan "the network is the computer"). IBM did have a few decades of experience inventing its own enterprise thin clients and terminals, so that theory seems plausible to me.
Re:PowerPC Solaris on the RS/6000
by kev009 on Thursday May 28, 2020 @09:46PM
(#23345444)
I know at least HP, IBM, and Sun had comprehensive X terminal strategies. I think this predated that with for instance cut down 7012s or the 7011-220 RSC (single chip POWER1) pizzabox.
I'm wondering what kind of diskless workstations or thin clients IBM might've had in mind. Bottom-end engineering workstations would have at least a 100MB drive by the time the first RS/6000 models came out. But there were X terminals (usually diskless, sometimes with only 4MB RAM), and what I'll call "sub-workstations" that were compatible miniature engineering workstations (like the SPARCstation SLC at the time, which might've booted diskless, though hopefully you had 8MB RAM). Sun might've already been working on thin clients then (and had the slogan "the network is the computer"). IBM did have a few decades of experience inventing its own enterprise thin clients and terminals, so that theory seems plausible to me.